Interesting that as fast as V8 JavaScript engine is, Google has improved it yet again by 2x.

The web app store seems pretty impressive, and it might be the total end of software piracy as we know it. Some of the web apps in the store were quite nice.

Optimizing things is nice and all, but this is becoming optimization for optimization's sake. Don't they have something useful they could be doing?

If you are doing simple things like form validation even IE6's JS engine is fast enough. But they want to make highly interactive apps blazing fast even on netbook hardware. The JS speeds really start to matter at that point.

I find it fascinating though, optimization of purely dynamic languages is something of a frontier in Computer Science.

• Even if some of the technology will work offline, it looks to me that the device will be incredibly bandwidth intensive. This is definitely going to be a problem for people traveling.
• I don't think there can be an offline mode for Citrix. Also this will require a very good connection (oh, by the way, didn’t the last demo stop responding?).
• The PDF rendering demo was extremely fast, but where was the PDF stored? Locally? I don't think it would be possible to download anything that big so fast.
• The WebGL demo was, well, very similar to another 3D demo given last week yet not as impressive and smooth. Why did they pick WebGL? Is WebGL a standard like HTML5?
• When one person in the audience asked a question about privacy and keystrokes being sent to Google when using the Omni bar, the answer was something like this "we take privacy very seriously, nothing is stored on your machine."
• Finally the webcast experience was relatively bad: viewing was interrupted quite a few times because of limited bandwidth and there was no way to pause the show for a few minutes and then pick up from where I left. Microsoft live webcasts are far superior in this sense.

Chrome MP. is ............ applauncher (and Bookmark Launcher with Big Incons)

there's also this kid (i think he's in high school) who has a usb bootable build http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/

i too am excited about the native client. i wonder if anyone is working on a mono and/or .net runtime that can be run inside the browser (or os)

i signed up for the beta testing pool. 1 in a million chance but you can't win if you don't play: http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program.html

3 hours ago, Zeus wrote

I was dissapointed in that the OS will only ship with OEMs, it's not intended to be downloaded and installed on it's own ... I really wanted to test it on a laptop I have hanging around.

Well, ChromeOS is far from a general purpose OS and therefore does not employ support for n hardware configurations... So, it doesn't provide the same capability/support model as a full strength gp OS like Windows or Linux or OSX. It's a web browser shell on top of a Linux kernel with very restricted hardware support. It's more of an appliance OS than anything else and it has a narrow focus. So, like the iPad, it's a single hardware device OS with specific built-in drivers (there is no driver development model) and a closed system to support a single model (web computation). In my mind, this is just device you use to surf the web and run web applications, something you can already do on every major OS. For the Windows case, the obvious truth about IE9 + Windows Vista/7 is that web browsing happens closer to the hardware than on any other browser. So, you can run the rich web AND have a gp OS that runs on a large number of hardware configurations. If a network is not present, then an OS like ChromeOS is not terribly useful, unlike the true gp operating systems...

I don't see the demise of the gp OS any time soon... Windows 7 is selling like hot cakes, new Windows PC form factors will continue to emerge and evolve, etc. Makes for good press, though, and speculation by the techy masses. Unfortunately, investors are easily fooled and the article I read this morning on Forbes (don't have the URL handy - go to their website and look for an article on MS stock expectations...) indicated that MS stock won't exceed 31 USD partly due to a decrease in PC sales over the next 5 years (on what grounds, exactly?) and more competition in the OS space with the addition of Chrome OS. Seems a tad early to make these claims. ChromeOS versus Windows is apples to oranges.

C

"11:33AM No root for you."

Hello Apple?

I will never touch this OS.

I'm sure we all know plenty of people who have bought laptops (and then netbooks) only to use web-browsing and hotmail, simply because there was no practical alternative.

Apple has already shown there is a market there, and once again MS seem to be missing the boat.

26 minutes ago, elmer wrote

@Charles:There is an awfully large number of consumers who simply don't need and/or want a general purpose OS and for whom such a product will be a perfect fit.

I'm sure we all know plenty of people who have bought laptops (and then netbooks) only to use web-browsing and hotmail, simply because there was no practical alternative.

Apple has already shown there is a market there, and once again MS seem to be missing the boat.

I'm not saying it's not got a use case... Obviously, it does. Windows is a well entrenched, well established, powerful, efficient, performant, capable OS that can run on more pieces of hardware than any other OS in the world (and it does...). IE9 + Windows = best of both worlds -> web browsing runtime that takes advantage of the underlying OS and an underlying OS that supports n number of applications and application platforms. I'll be clearer in what I mean: ChromeOS, even if wildly successful, will not significantly impact Windows in the global marketplace. That's my hypothesis, anyway. Let's not forget that Windows hasn't stopped evolving at Windows 7...

We'll see

C

And the point that I'm trying to make is that MS are missing an opportunity with that approach.

WP7 is going to struggle in the market place, now that MS left it so late in the day to get serious.

Apple have shown that by taking what is essentailly the iPhone OS and adapting it to a tablet device, not only do they satisfy a significant market sector, but they reinforce their iPhone market.

Chrome OS may not kill Windows, but I dare say it will kill WP7, as it almost inevitably merges with Android.

C

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4055/anands-thoughts-on-googles-chrome-os

3 hours ago, joechung wrote

Is it finally the year of the Linux desktop?

 

It's been the year of the Linux desktop since 1997 for me.

11 hours ago, Zeus wrote

I was dissapointed in that the OS will only ship with OEMs, it's not intended to be downloaded and installed on it's own ... I really wanted to test it on a laptop I have hanging around.

Chrome OS is fully open source. I've built it from source and ran it in a virtual machine. I must warn you that it takes a really, really long time to build.

12 hours ago, Bass wrote

*snip*

It's been the year of the Linux desktop since 1997 for me.

why are you here then?

13 minutes ago, USArcher wrote

*snip*

why are you here then?

Because you don't have to pick between Linux and Microsoft. You can have the best of both worlds, and that's truly how you become something above the rest of the zealots.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore

But it's funny that they are all just normal websites in the end of the day.